Newbie Guide
Introduction: Hello and welcome to this exciting game! Bounty Bay Online (BBO) is a nautical gameplay-based game, where you can explore, trade and fight the world. About the 'why' of this guide: New players often get overwhelmed by the options in the game and get lost, die and quit the game. Which is an eternal shame, since with a little guidance, they could have become the most addicted players to the game. The newbie guides on the main site are quite good, but sometimes hard to understand and not really attuned to the newbie's situation, so I decided to bundle this information in one big guide. What does this guide contain?: This guide contains all the information, I hope, to get a new player started into the game. It will not explain all the details of the game and how to absolutely master it. The information in this guide is compiled from the main site and my own knowledge playing the game. I am no master in the game, so things can be wrong. Some parts maybe incorrect, incomplete or simply missing, but if you think that something is missing, please state it so. We're a community and with a combined effort we can make this work. Where to start?: After a short tutorial you're standing in your home city Athens (Or Alexander, Istanbul or Beirut, depending on which character you chose on creation). What to do? First I will learn you the most important buttons that prevent you from getting lost: Ctrl + M. Holding these buttons simultaneously will cause the map to display. Ctrl + M again and the map will disappear again. You are being displayed as a green arrow, while others players are yellow blocks and NPCs are white blocks. Hovering over a block gives you the name of the object. Now look for an NPC with an exclamation mark above his head. He shouldn't be too far away from you. I can't really give a name, since it differs per birth city. He will give you some money and, after some talking, some materials to rebuild your boat. Now you must go to the Shipyard Boss (See the map!) and rebuild your ship according to the class you want. Ship classes: When you are talking to the Shipyard Boss and selecting the option “Rebuild Ship”, you can choose from 3 types of ships. Before choosing a ship, read the “Making money” part below. The battleship: It is the strongest ship and having the most cannons, making it ideal to hunt pirates and other players with, so if you want to go plundering other ships you must select this type of ship. One warning: Attacking white sail NPC ships and non-hostile players will give you notoriety. This may cause you to go to jail, a very boring experience. This type of ship is also the slowest and doesn't have much room to carry supplies. The merchant ship: The trusty ol' merchant ship. The worker of the lot. It carries the most supplies and is also quite strong. It's medium fast, but is lightly armed. It can take a low-level pirate, but don't be too expecting of it's prowess. The raiding ship: The ship for a discoverer. Has a medium loading capacity and armament, but shines when it comes to speed. It's speed though, makes it have the least strong hull, so be careful on your trips. If you want to be somewhere quick though, take this ship. Making money: Well, to do fun stuff you need money? How to get it? Well, that's easy, do quests! You can get quests from the Guild Masters, with the Merchant Guild handing out the most money. Other available Guild Masters are the Ares Warrior Guild Master, Adventurer's Alliance Master and the Master of Alliance. It's a good advice to first do a couple of Merchant quests to gain large amounts of money. They are not always exciting (they're rather not), but make a lot of money with my biggest quest up until now giving me 600,000 silver! Also a good tip is the fact in the case that the Guild leader asks you to bring 20 items and you can only carry 10 in one run, that you can still do the quest. Just bring it in parts, the Guild leader will even tell you how much items you still have to deliver. You can find the Guild Leaders outside and inside the city, depending on the city you are in. Again, the map gives you their location. Skills: Quests require skills and so you need to know how to acquire them and train them, so here we go. Skillmaster: This NPC can learn you any skill you will need in the game. He resides just inside the city, so look around when entering the city to find him. He is also able to learn and upgrade special skills and advance skills beyond level 31. (They are initially capped up to lvl 31 and only 7 skills can be upgraded to so-called phase 2 skills) When learning a skill, you will also get the basic equipment needed to train the skill. (Learning mining will give you a pick axe and learning sword-play will give you a sword) Every 4 levels you gain a stunt point in a skill which the Skill master can use to give you access to special abilities. Learning special abilities can be done in the second screen under “Special”. Learning or upgrading abilities will cost some money, with the upgrade increasingly costing more. Choose well. Passive skills do not cost SP(Stamina points, the blue bar of your character) and are always active, while other abilities cost a certain amount of SP to use. Ship skills: In order to upgrade your ship, you will need to train it's 3 basic skills, Manoeuvrability, Military Equipment and Structure. You can find these under your ship's status screen; Ctrl + Z. You can upgrade Manoeuvrability by sailing around (5 XP every 10 seconds), but mostly by discovering things. You can do this by obtaining quest of the Adventurers Guild or by coming by a sparkling spot. (It also makes a tingling sound) By discovering here (Look at the short-cut bar below, should be on bar 1, shortcut F7) you will gain an item that proofs the discovery. You can later show this evidence to a Authenticator (See "Discoveries" below) and gain some reputation and money. Military Equipment is improved by battling. By damaging other ships in battle, your XP will go up and your stunt points will give you access to better cannons and/or equipment like fire shooters, grapple hooks and rams. I will list two popular cannon types here. First there's the Howitzer. This class of cannons has good damage and good range, but reloads slower and has a lesser firing arc. The Buckshot class of cannons have the biggest firing arc and reloads faster, but has less range and damage. Structure is upgraded by completing Merchant Guild quests and selling trader items with a profit. Marble and oranges I noticed make a good profit. Manoeuvrability is the most important skills for an Adventurer while Military Equipment is needed for bigger Battleships and finally, Structure is needed to upgrade Merchant ships. Resource skills: In VCO, you have a lot of skills that you can use to gather resources yourself. Skills like mining, timber-felling, planting, and fishing are resource skills. When you have learned the skill at the skill master you can practice these skills in the suburbs of a city, except for fishing where you have to go to the off-shore scene. You can replace your worn-down equipment at the blacksmith or other merchants. To make ore or logs into a usable items you will need to open up the command window. At the on-land tab you can select the production windows for ore and other categories of resources. At this screen you can select the level of ore desired and compound 3 ores into a bar. This will cost 5 SP, just as using a resource skill gradually reduces your SP up to the point where you need to rest (Shortcut F8).. Combat skills: In order to wield a certain kind of weapon, you will need to learn it's respective skill. You can choose from sword-playing, falchion-playing, axe- playing and shooting. When learning the chosen skill you will get the weapon from the skill master. Note that a gun will consume ammo, which you can buy at the blacksmith. In order to gain XP in combat skills, you must damage monster NPCs, other NPCs or other players. A good place to start is Athens, because it's suburbs have low-level monsters that don't hurt you too much. Immediately going to higher level cities and dying at the fangs of a Wolf lord can't be too much after all. Watch out that dying does also lower your reputation. About your ship: Your ship is the most important thing you have. It carries you and your goods across the seas into other realms and makes the game to what it is. So it's very important to know your ship and how to use it effectively. Upgrading a ship: You just want a bigger ship. To load more cannons, to carry more goods or just because it looks * cool. To have a bigger ship you will need to fulfil certain skills requirements as stated before. In short you'll need (ship lvl – 1) * 10 + 1 voyage, (ship lvl – 1) * 10 structure and (ship lvl – 1) * 5 eloquence to rebuild your merchant ship into a high level ship for instance. Battleships require military equipment levels and Raiding ships manoeuvrability. After you meet these requirements, go to the Shipyard boss in the city where you can get a ship of your level. (Genoa for lvl 2 ships, Algiers for lvl 3 + 4 ships and so on) The Shipyard boss will require a certain amount of metal and timber (depends on the desired level of the ship) and some silver. After giving him the materials, he will upgrade your ship to the next level. Congratulations! The use of a figurehead: A figurehead will give your ship a certain bonus to it's attributes and will also strengthen it's hull and damage-resisting capabilities. There are 3 kinds of figureheads, one for each type of ship. Fire types will increase your maximum cannon amount, Water heads will increase your maximum loading capacity and a Wind figurehead will increase the maximum number of sailors and speed on your ships. A figurehead gains experience as the ship that carries it gains XP in it's skills. (Manoeuvrability, Military Equipment and Structure) When a figurehead's XP is full, it can be upgraded. You can upgrade a figurehead by de-equipping it at the Shipyard boss and select the “Upgrade figurehead” option. The Shipyard boss will want to have some materials and when you provide them, he will try to upgrade it. This attempt may fail! When this happens, make sure your figurehead can still be upgraded (Possible Upgrade Failture Numbers property) and try again. If you try to upgrade a figurehead without any Possible Upgrade Failture Numbers left, you risk breaking the figurehead. The bonuses of this upgrading will be better at higher level cities in most cases, although it's said that city population also has something to do with it. Docker: This is one of your best friends. Always in the immediately vicinity of the dock (duh), he can heal your sailors, recruit sailors (albeit the tavern is cheaper), sell you provision and other things. A useful tip is that with a level 1 ship, the recruiting and healing of sailors is free of charge. At this NPC you can sail off to the High Seas or Off Shore scenes. Shipyard Boss: Always hangs around somewhere on the docks, but more land-inwards. Check the map for his exact location. Provides services such as the sale of cannonballs, cannons and other ship equipment, repairs, ship rebuilds (only certain cities), figurehead upgrades (only certain cities) and much more. A useful tip is that with a level 1 ship, the repairs of your ship are free! Sailing the world: After you did everything in the city you want to sail about. Make sure that your ship has enough sailors and provision (About 300/400) to get to another city. The ships sailing the world can be divided in 3 easy groups. Ships with a white sail are good-guy NPCs, don't attack these. Ships with a black sail are pirates and you can attack them free of prosecution, but they can also attack you. Ships with grey sails are other players. When sailing around the world with some easy mouse clicks, you will notice these several special things. Pirates: The nemesis of trading vessels. These rather fast ships can appear any time and attack you! This is a random event however and this may not happen to you for a whole hour and then 3 times in a minute. If you want to fight pirates for sure, go to one of the Battlefields like Crete or Gibraltar, but watch out; you might encounter more than one ship at the time. When a pirates halts you, you have 4 options; bribe, overwhelm, escape and attack. With bribe you just send the pirates some money to leave you alone and continue immediately. This is the preferred way of merchants, as it doesn't take much time. Overwhelm has a chance of instantly killing the pirate, giving you instant XP. If the Overwhelming fails, normal battle is initiated. When escaping, there is a chance to escape without paying anything or the chance to still end up in battle. Attack straightout launches the battle scene. In the battle scene, click the pirates and click on it again to shoot cannonballs at it. Make sure that your cannons are in range to fire, taking into account the maximum firing distance and firing arc. Floaters/Drifters: Floaters are shown on the High seas as floating boxes. Entering the scene will give you an opportunity to pick up some lost, random items. Others may enter or have already entered the scene, showing as blue names just under “floaters”. There never will be pirates in a floaters scene. Discoveries: Sometimes the sea will sparkle and a little tingling tune will sound. This means you need to go discover at that spot to get some interesting award. After putting your sailors to work and giving them some time you may find some provisions and a discovery (A plant, a mountain or an animal) and get the evidence of it. You might even find a Treasure Map, but only *one* piece at a time. You can show this evidence to an Authenticator for extra reputation. An Authenticator can be found in different cities like Venice (Called Galilea, in the city left of the bridge) or Portugal (In the tavern, not sure of his name). It's possible for a city not to have an Authenticator! Reputation: Reputation measures your social standing in the world. You get reputation by completing quests and sinking other ships (mostly pirates). You will lose reputation by dying or sinking your ship. When your reputation is high enough for another title, (50 rep for the first title, 800 for the next) you can go to the boss of your *birthplace* city (Has a different name in each city, but usually wears very rich clothing, looking really noble) and have him apply a new rank after paying him some silver. If you don't have enough enough amity with your city, go to the city official and invest some money to upgrade your amity. Noble titles like these might be require to wield certain high level weapons, armor and items.